The Dubai mall surely is one of the most spectacular malls in the world. Among other things, it houses an aquarium, two theme parks, a cinema and almost two thousand stores Food-wise, you will find almost any kind of food you can think of at the enormous food court as well as the over 400 restaurants and franchises, such as Cheesecake factory and Cold Stone Creamery.

Walking underneath hundreds of colored umbrellas.

When it comes to fashion, you probably expect to only find everything to be on the expensive side, yet, Dubai has no VAT an therefore, even brands that may be quite expensive in your country are more reasonably priced in Dubai. You will likely find any major and popular brand in this enormous mall, which is divided into different sections.

1. The Village

The Village is an indoor & outdoor street scape, styled like a typical pedestrian area with small shops and a retractable roof. Of course, a regular shopping street would not have been spectacular enough, so they decided to add a layer of colorful umbrellas above the ground floor to create a stunning and unique effect. Also, if the roof is retracted and it starts raining, you won’t get wet.

If you enter the hallway on the right of this photo, you will end up at a full size ice rink, which will host hockey matches, ice skating discos or even soccer tournaments depending on it’s daily schedule. The second floor houses the KidZania and the SEGA republic indoor theme parks as well as a 22-screen movie theater.

Looking over the Village passage.

Walking through The Souk

2. The Souk

The Souk is a dimly lit labyrinth of small stores, designed to look like an unrealistically polished version of a historial arabic market (souk). Jewelers and fashion stores in this section offer more traditional merchandise than in other parts of the Mall, but since that would not have been unique enough, they added the 7 meter high “Dubai Dino”, a dinosaur imported from Wyoming, where it was discovered at the Dana Quarry in 2008. With its impressive age of 155 million years, it offers an interesting contrast to its brand new surroundings.

The Dubai Dino

Not only at the Souk but across the entire mall you will find elaborately decorated atriums extending over the upper three floors, thereby creating bright open spaces.

The Souk Atrium at The Dubai Mall

3. The Waterfall

The Dubai Mall does not want you to find what you are looking for immediately – it wants to keep you entertained as long as possible. How else can you explain massive installations like The Waterfall, spanning 30 meters in diameter and 24 meters in height, extending over all four floors of the mall?

Dubai Mall

Look at those Theeth

4. The Dubai Aquarium & Underwater Zoo

Speaking of water, what would the biggest mall of the world be without an oversized aquarium? The Dubai Mall hosts the Dubai Aquarium & Underwater Zoo, with a spectacular 32.8m by 8.3m acrylic viewing panel open to the public and a stunning walk-through tunnel under the shark basin. The underwater zoo features water animals from all parts of the world, including the over five meter long “King Croc”, a huge 40 year old crocodile rescued from a municipal park in Australia, where it was starting to become a problem as it grew bigger. He didn’t want his picture taken when we came by, though. Maybe next time?

Leo, the lionfish

5. Everything Else

Believe it or not, we did not come to The Dubai Mall to take pictures. In fact, we spent almost an entire day there without even getting the camera out because we were exhausted from our travels in Kenya. When we came back on the second day, we took most of the above pictures and also couldn’t resist to take a few shots of store displays. All throughout the Mall, stores are not just stores but unique and sometimes unbelievably detailed sceneries competing to display the products in the most original ways. Below are two candy displays we found particularly interesting.

Every year, millions of tourists invade Munich for a visit of the original Oktoberfest (also known as “die Wiesn” by locals), the world’s biggest fair, first held on the Teresienwiese in 1810. There are four types of Oktoberfest visitors:

No. 1 – the Oktoberfest fanatic: he saves up all year and takes two weeks off – sometimes even longer if a recovery period is required – in order to party all day in the beer tent of his choice.

No. 2 – the casual Oktoberfest visitor: he may spend a few days partying in a beer tent with friends, preferably on the weekend, but also enjoys strolling across the Teresienwiese, eating cotton candy and roasted nuts and going on some of the rides.

No. 3 – the families: Tuesday afternoons is family day and the Oktoberfest swarms with children, parents and grandparents.

No. 4 – the Oktoberfest avoider: he doesn’t like big crowds and – mostly unsuccessfully – tries to avoid Oktoberfest and it’s effects on daily public life. He may even go so far as to flee the city and avoid it altogether.

When asking people from abroad about Oktoberfest, almost all of them immediately mention the beer tents, the stereotypical German/Bavarian music and the pretty dresses and Lederhosen (note to potential tourists, especially from Asia: no, the Oktoberfest is not a carnival, it is not mandatory to buy a cheap knock-off costume that looks authentic to you but – we promise you – isn’t…). Besides the huge and beautifully decorated beer tents, Oktoberfest also offers dozens of rides, from houses of horror to rollercoasters and shooting galleries. Every year there are some new attractions, others have been there for as long as any Wiesn-visitor can remember (some are over 90 years old). Not surprisingly – regardless of their age – one thing they all have in common is the ridiculously high admission fee.

Wether or not the Oktoberfest is your thing, I guess we can all agree that all those lights can be a fun challenge to capture at night. Flashing neo lights and ever-changing color sequence require many takes and a lot of experimentation with your camera. You can also expect to cross loads of people who want their picture taken, which is fun but inconvenient if you just set up a manual mode shot with 30 seconds of exposure. Bring a second camera if you can if you’d like to take people’s portrait while not messing up your long-exposure setup.

The following is a quick collection of some of the rides that turned out nicely. We’ve put up some additional portraits on Facebook so people can tag themselves if they find their picture.

There are several variations and sizes of this swing carousel all across the Octoberfest.

It wouldn’t be a classic Wiesn ride if it didn’t have that weird 90s style about it.

If you don’t like being flung around on such a trajectory, save your money. Especially if you’re not sure if you had one Maß beer too many.

At the Oktoberfest, the American Dream can come true for just a couple of Euros.

Bumper cars are big in Germany. Maybe just because Germans love cars, who knows. People seem to enjoy driving around at sub-walking speed as long as the music is loud and the lights are flashy.

There can’t be just one bumper car ride on the Oktoberfest. In 2015, there are six in total.

There are some things visitors can’t appreciate as much as photographers with these rides: the way their light effects look in motion during longer exposures.

Top Spin is one of the classic rides everyone has to go on at least once.

After flipping everyone upside down a couple times, its signature move is to soak everyone in cold water.

The name says it all.

The name says it all, part 2.

This ride also does what the label says.

For those who came here to do sports, hop on the swingboats and try to do a rollover!

We hope you’ve enjoyed this rundown of a couple of rides at night. What are your favorites? Have you been to the Oktoberfest before? Did we miss the best one? Let us know in the comments below!

With its rough landscape and precipitation-heavy climate, Iceland is covered with amazing waterfalls – many of them easily accessible along the ring road and a must-see on the obligatory trip around the island. The tour we did went counter-clockwise and therefore, the following waterfalls are in that order. Have you been to other amazing waterfalls missing in our list? Please let us know in the comment section below.

When leaving Reykjavík in South-Eastern direction and after passing the attractions belonging to the “Golden Circle”, you will get to one of the most impressive waterfalls – the Seljalandsfoss. It is unique due to the way it drops off a huge overhanging cliff and as you can see in the pictures below, you can walk behind it. Since Seljalandsfoss is located very close to the ring road and under two hours from Reykjavík, you can expect several tour buses worth of people swarming the site during the day. Since we try to avoid having too many people in our pictures, we went there in the late evening and returned early morning for some more shots.

To fully appreciate how big Seljalandsfoss is, click the image to zoom in and try to spot the person on the stairs!

In the morning, the sun illuminates the cliff above the Seljalandsfoss from behind.

Walking around and behind a waterfall is something you can’t do everywhere!

It’s wet in here. Couldn’t look any more different than from the outside!

Driving further east along the coast, it doesn’t take long to reach the next stunning waterfall. With its width of 25 meters and a drop of 60 meters, the Skógafoss is one of the biggest waterfalls in Iceland. It drops down from the Icelandic highlands to almost sea level. The site is very accessible, with a big parking lot and camping-site directly below its basin. You can climb up on top of the cliff in a matter of 15 minutes or so, thanks to a stairway to the right of the fall.

Skógafoss from below.

Walking up the path to the top of Skógafoss.

At the top of Skógafoss.

Svartifoss, the next waterfall is situated a few hours further East. Driving along the South coast, you can’t miss the huge glacier Vatnajökull (you really can’t, it covers 8% of the country). The Skaftafell Visitor Centre is a great starting point for glacier trips, ice cave excursions and hikes in the mountains of the Vatnajökull massive. The Svartifoss waterfall shown below lies a mere 30 minute hike above the visitor center on the south slope of the Skaftafell peak. Svartifoss drops in a half circle of black basaltic columns forming an impressive overhang.

The Svartifoss drops into an impressive circular gorge.

The beautiful black basaltic columns characterize Svartifoss.

On our way up the east coast, or rather back and forth the unpaved roads along the fjords, we had to make a few detours before reaching Hengifoss: Our GPS suggested narrow mountain roads suitable only for 4x4s with high clearance, which we didn’t have. Since we couldn’t go over the mountains, we had to drive around them, which ended up being a detours of over 100km (note to self: upgrading to a 4×4 is definitely worth the money in Iceland!). Therefore, we arrived at Hengifoss after 9pm but still walked the 45 minutes up the hill to take pictures. Thanks to midnight sun, which beginning to set at the time we reached the waterfall, we still had fairly decent light – next time we’ll try to get up there in the morning, which our schedule didn’t allow for last time. As you can see below, it was still totally worth it!

The mountain around Hengifoss features a stunning variety of rock types.

Sturdy shoes are advised if you try to come this close!

The red lines between the rock layers are one of a kind.

The next stop on our tour was the two waterfalls Dettifoss & Selfoss, bothon the glacier river Jökulsá á Fjöllum, located in the Vatnajökull National Park. Dettifoss, the most powerful waterfall in Europe, is more than 100m wide and the water drops 45m into the Jökulsárgljúfur canyon. Approaching from the East means driving over 20km on a rough and bumpy gravel road before getting to the car park (the park website has announced road improvements). From there, a trail leads down to the waterfalls, which will first take you to Dettifoss after about 0.5km. While the other side of the river is probably easier to get to, the view from the east side is much more impressive! Standing right next to the waterfall listening to the deafening noise of the running and falling water and looking down into the agitated, swirling waters is incredible. But careful, when the stones are wet – which they are most of the time, considering Icelandic weather – they are extremely slippery and since there are no barriers, walking too close to the edge can become very dangerous.

Dettifoss – the most powerful waterfall in Europe.

This is what 85 megawatts of hydropower looks like.

In order to get to Selfoss, the second waterfall on the Jökulsá á Fjöllum river, you need to follow the trail upstream for about another 1.5km. Selfoss is a beautiful horseshoe-shaped waterfall. Despite a much smaller drop of only about 10 meters, it is none the less impressive and worth a visit. The trail leading there is a bit difficult though, and you need to watch your step. It leads you over rocks and through black sand and the trail markers are at times hard to spot – but since they only show you the easiest path, you’ll still get there if you don’t follow them precisely.

Selfoss is just a short hike upstream from Dettifoss.

Selfoss drops along a long diagonal cliff.

When the river carries thawing water, the whole area in the front is under water aswell.

At the very end of our trip, we drove to the town Grundarfjörður whereKirkjufellsfoss is located. This small waterfall is the featured image of a print advertisement for Iceland’s unique and beautiful nature. Seeing it in person was an interesting and at first rather disappointing experience since of course the waterfall looked nothing like the ad – not in terms of photo quality and colors but in term of where the waterfall is located with respect to the hill behind it and the road between the two. We set up our tripod in the exact same location and were able to recreate the perspective but more on that in another post!

Kirkjufellsfoss is a small but beautiful waterfall just outside of Grundarfjörður.

Kirkjufellsfoss cascades nicely over two smaller steps.

We hope you enjoyed the photos of the must-see Icelandic waterfalls. Feel free to comment below, we’d love your opinions and recommendations!

Of course, there are a lot more waterfalls in Iceland. We used the trip planning tool Furkot to plan our round trip. The following map is a template with many waterfalls you can use to plan your own Iceland trip: